Share this video

Watch Next

A once “fit and healthy” schoolboy who died a week short of his 13th birthday could have been saved if two doctors at his local surgery had intervened, a manslaughter trial heard.

Cardiff Crown Court heard allegations it was a failure in their “duty of care”, following telephone calls from his mother to Abernant Surgery in Abertillery, which led to the death of 12-year-old Ryan Morse in December 2012.

They had failed to visit him or call an ambulance when they should have recognised that his mother was was describing “what could possibly be a very sick child indeed”, said prosecutor John Price QC.

After he died at his home in the early hours Ryan was found to have been suffering from undiagnosed Addison’s disease – a condition which affects only 10 to 15 in every 100,000 people but which is treatable.

Mr Price said accused GPs Joanne Rudling, 46 and Lindsey Thomas, 42, who deny manslaughter, were not being blamed for failing to recognise a condition which is not only rare but “especially rare amongst children”.

'Criminally at fault'

The “sin” he alleged was one of “omission” in them not responding differently to his condition on the day before he died when each spoke to his mum Carol Morse on the phone.

Mr Price told the court: “It is the conduct of each of the two doctors in response to her telephone calls on the morning and evening of Friday December 7 – within hours of his death occurring – which lies at the heart of the accusations the prosecution makes – that each one [of the defendants] is separately criminally at fault for the death of Ryan Morse, which occurred in the early hours of that Saturday morning.

“The complaint against them is one of omission – what each should have done but failed to do in response to reports from the mother about the condition of her child.”

Hospital admission

He had been “fit and healthy” and “very active as you would expect from a boy that age” until July 2012 when he first began to “show the symptoms of the disease that within five months would be the cause of his death”, said Mr Price.

Describing the two phone consultations with Mrs Morse hours before her son’s death he alleged both doctors failed to recognise they were dealing with a child “so sick to be at risk of dying” and one in need of direct medical intervention.

He told the court: “Ryan was in fact dying.

“Had a doctor gone and looked at him they would have seen for themselves.

“It would have led to an admission to hospital as an emergency case.”

Attempt to 'cover up'

Mr Price told the court that Rudling attempted to "cover up" after she she heard how Ryan had died suddenly hours after she spoke to his mother on the phone.

He said she failed to tell investigators she had filled in his medical notes on the Monday morning after his weekend death as police stood in the surgery waiting for a print out.

Mr Price she she also failed to accurately record Ms Morse reporting on the Friday evening that she had discovered her son's private parts had turned black – a sign of something possibly seriously wrong.

Instead she recorded the mother as saying she had noticed "changed colour."

"The (medical) note was misleading – this was an attempted cover-up," he said.

"And our case is supported by other alleged dishonest behaviour by her.

"We say she told lies, making a false claim to the Aneurin Bevan Health Board."

Rudling had also said Mrs Morse "didn't ask her to visit" that evening and if she had "I would have because it's on my way home".

'A dirty brown'

Video recorded statements Mrs Morse made to police were played in the courtroom.

She said the first thing she had noticed about her son was the discoloration of his skin when he still appeared healthy.

"Around his mouth he looked like he needed a shave but he was too young for that and his eyes looked as if he hadn't slept for months," she said.

But Mrs Morse said because it happened gradually, over weeks, the fact that he was reaching puberty and it was the summer she put it down at first to the sun or his age.

She would tease him, ask if he had used soap on his face, knees and elbows . When he came out the shower, she said her daughter and husband noticed too.

"He would go a nice brown in the sun but this was a dirty brown," she said.

"He would say 'Of course I've washed mum' and he had no other symptoms then."

She said that it wasn't until after a school trip a couple of weeks later when Ryan came home vomiting and "disorientated", not making sense when he spoke and saying he had been unable to walk around with the other children, that they went to the surgery.

Mrs Morse said she saw his body was the same dark colour when a doctor lifted his T-shirt to examine him.

"It was like he had been stripped off and put out in the sun," she told police.

The court heard that less than two weeks before he died, a teacher and education welfare officer who met Ryan to discuss what had become "prolonged absences " from classes said he looked "thin, gaunt and grey".